In recent years, a silver halide photographic material that can give high image quality and that can be processed rapidly has been desired in this field.
In development processing of silver halide photographic materials, generally silver halide photographic materials are continuously processed by automatic processors installed in respective photofinishing laboratories. As one of their services for customers it is required that the silver halide photographic material be developed and returned to the customer on the same day that the silver halide photographic material is brought to the laboratory. Recently it is even required that the silver halide photographic material be developed and returned to the customer within one hour after receipt of the silver halide photographic material. Thus, rapid processing is increasingly required. Development of rapid processing is earnestly needed because the shortening of the processing time leads to an improvement in production efficiency and makes it possible to lower the cost.
Under these circumstances, it is known that the shape, the size, and the composition of silver halide grains in silver halide emulsions used in photographic materials greatly affects the developing speed, etc., and that the halogen composition greatly affects the developing speed, etc. It is known that when a high-chloride silver halide is used, particularly remarkably high developing speed is exhibited.
With a view to lowering the load of solution-preparation work of color developers and for protecting the environment, in recent years it has been desired that a color developer be free from benzyl alcohol. It is also desired that a color developer does not contain a sulfite, which is used as an antioxidant of color-developing agents in color developers. Sulfites react with couplers competing with the oxidized product of the color-developing agent, thereby lowering the image density, or the color-formed dye density fluctuates correspondingly to a change in the amount of the sulfite in the color developer due to the reaction.
Taking the above into consideration, recently in the field of color paper, high-chloride silver halides are used, and methods have been put into practice wherein they are processed with a color developer substantially free from both benzyl alcohol and a sulfite.
However, the use of high-chloride silver halides has had a problem that mixing of colors is liable to occur. It is presumed that one of the causes is that since the silver-developing speed becomes extremely high, in comparison with slow silver development, the oxidized product of a developing agent resulting from the silver development cannot react with the coupler in the pertinent layer, and the extent of the diffusion of that oxidized product into other layers increases relatively. Also it was revealed that the occurrence of this phenomenon is particularly facilitated when a color developer free from benzyl alcohol or a sulfite or a pyrazoloazole coupler is used.
As a means of solving this problem, it was considered to increase the thickness of the intermediate layer between the emulsion layers or to increase the quantity of a color-mixing inhibitor, such as a hydroquinone derivative, that would undergo a redox reaction with the oxidized product of a developing agent. However, but this means was attended with the problem that the amount of a color-mixing inhibitor was needed to be considerably increased in order to improve the color mixing to a satisfactory level, which was expensive, or that the rapidness of the processability was reduced owing to the increase in the thickness of the film.